Man arrested for beating opossum wins right to sue

When Lorenzo Oliver called Anaheim police about the opossum in his backyard he didn’t know that he would end up going to jail.

But Oliver and his then 12-year-old son were hauled away in March 2008 on suspicion of trying to kill a mother opossum with a shovel– sparking a landslide of hate mail and death threats over what turned out not to be a crime in the first place.

Now Oliver may finally get his day in court–and it’s the Anaheim police who stand accused of wrongdoing.